Like digging through a Halloween goodie-bag a week later to find both melted chocolate (yuck) and not-so-melted Sour Patch Kids (hooray!), these five soundtrack reviews contain some good stuff and some bad stuff.

But rather than try and sort out the good and bad for you, I'll sort by author.

Ooh ooh ooh, me first!

I wrote three reviews. The first is a promotional album for the DS game Deep Labyrinth. Yes, yes, the one that we profusely thrashed for being a terrible game. That same game had music from Yasunori Mitsuda, and it's no surprise to find that the music was probably the best thing about the whole project.

I said in my last update that this would be coming, and here it is: the Growlanser V ~Generations~ Soundtrack. Two discs of synth-packed goodness, and one of the latest PS2 RPGs to be released in Japan.

Finally, I also tackled "Motoi Sakuraba Live 2006," which primarily features music from Valkyrie Profile 2 -Silmeria-. This man just doesn't stop the rock. You can't stop the rock. Can't stop the rock.

Reader Derek Strange brings us the other two, and they are smokin' hot off the press. Well, one is anyway.

That "new" one would be the rock arranged album for the Wild Arms series, with the fitting subtitle "rocking heart" attached. A few of the arrangements come from Ryo Yonemitsu, a man who disappeared from the VGM scene over a decade ago and is just recently reappearing. It's exciting stuff, folks!

The not-as-new soundtrack is the two disc soundtrack for Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire. Check out what Derek thought of this full-length OST.

Next week, even more albums new and old will be reviewed! Can you guess what's to come? Probably not, but you're welcome to try! See you next week!